Welding rear BPEs?

New guy learning about XJs. I've started a project to to lift a '98 with a 4.5" kit. In the process swapping in an 8.8 axle. Last night while pulling the stock rear setup, found 2 of the rear shocks bolts were broken already, the other 2 just spin when I try to pull them. A little research and see it is common and not a big deal to fix. I've seen the ideas of knocking out the old setup and going through the floor to replace them...

So my question was I was looking at the IRO BPEs for the rear shocks. Any reason why I could not cut off the broken shock bolts, then weld the BPEs direct the the unibody to make the new shock mounting location?

I've seen some of the discussion on the value of BPE kits verse the simplicity of cutting the floor. But if I already have a BPE kit or fab one up, plus I will need to weld up the new lower shock mount tabs to the axle. Any reason not to?

Thanks all.

If you weld them in, how do you get the shocks on and off?

it depends on the style i guess... the IRO ones are not like the JKS. you can remove the shock after welding the bracket in.

Welding BPE to stock sheetmetal without adding BEEF = Bad. See here....... http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=913774&page=14

That is a good link, had not seen that in my lurking...

It is kind of funny to me though, Seems the stock setup does not have much clamping on the unibody but maybe I'm not understanding how large the nuts are on the inside of the body sheetmetal. I need to climb up under the XJ again though, I only looked at it briefly last night.

The inner layer of the crossmember, which serves as the upper rear shock mounting point, is thicker than the sheetmetal that is exposed below, so simply welding mounts to the outer layer of sheetmetal will net the same results that I outlined on my build thread.